For a Restless Maazel, The Ultimate Trophy?

Published: September 15, 2002

Correction Appended

(Page 2 of 2)

Perhaps not, but his is a rare gift -- again, those extremes. Born to Americans in Neuilly, France, in 1930, Mr. Maazel made his New York conducting debut at 7, with Arturo Toscanini's NBC Symphony. Two years later, he conducted at the Hollywood Bowl, sharing a Los Angeles Philharmonic program with Leopold Stokowski, and at the New York World's Fair. He first led the New York Philharmonic at 12 in Lewisohn Stadium.

''I was not spoiled or scarred by my childhood,'' he said. ''My mother and father were very laid back. They were atypical parents of a so-called child prodigy. I performed only when I didn't have to be in school, and I was never exploited. It was something I really wanted to do.''

After education in Los Angeles and Pittsburgh, he joined the Pittsburgh Symphony at 18 to help pay his way through college, majoring in philosophy. He studied Baroque music in Italy on a Fulbright fellowship and made his European debut in Catania in 1953. After appearances at the festivals in Bayreuth and Salzburg, among other places, he became artistic director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1965 and stayed until 1971.

He was named George Szell's successor in Cleveland in 1972, but not before the players had voted overwhelmingly in an unofficial poll for Mr. Maazel's chief rival for the position, Istvan Kertesz (76 votes to Mr. Maazel's 2 and others' 20). The incident unleashed enough chaos to ensure its place in American orchestral lore as a permanent warning to boards to consult the players and consider their wishes.

''I don't know what happened in Cleveland,'' Mr. Maazel said. The relationship remained more or less rocky to the end.

''His Cleveland tenure had become a wild ride of magnificent, illuminating, weird, maddening and indifferent performances,'' Donald Rosenberg writes in ''The Cleveland Story: Second to None,'' ''depending upon the repertoire and the conductor's frame of mind. . . . He could turn surly and hostile not only in rehearsal but also in the midst of a performance, if something didn't go as he thought it should.''

In 1982, Mr. Maazel became general manager of the Vienna State Opera, notorious for devouring conductors, including Karajan. Mr. Maazel lasted less than two years in a world where musical politics is a blood sport. He now blames corruption, on the part of the culture minister.

When Karajan died in 1989, the Berlin Phiharmonic, whose polls are official and binding, chose Claudio Abbado to succeed him, leaving Mr. Maazel in the lurch along with James Levine, Seiji Ozawa and others. Mr. Maazel called a press conference in Berlin to reaffirm his commitment to Pittsburgh and announce the cancellation of scheduled appearances in Berlin, ostensibly to free up dates for Mr. Abbado.

The last decade has proved less eventful for Mr. Maazel, allowing him to spend more time on composition. His Music for Cello and Orchestra of 1996 is especially impressive. He is writing an opera, ''1984,'' for an unspecified European house in 2005. ''It's really about 2084,'' he said, ''and all the new ramifications of control.''

Still, Mr. Maazel remains peripatetic, with apartments in New York and Monaco (not for tax purposes, he explains, since Americans don't stand to benefit, but for access to an airport open 24 hours). His home is an estate in northern Virginia, where he lives with his third wife, Dietlinde Turban, a German actress, and their three children, in or near their teens.

New York audiences have much to look forward to. Mr. Maazel's performances of Sibelius and certain other composers can be wonderful, and his version of Prokofiev's ''Romeo and Juliet'' with the Cleveland Orchestra on Decca is one of the finest recordings of the modern era. For the rest, expect, if not Cleveland's wild ride, perhaps what John Adams titled one of his works: a short ride in a fast machine.

Correction: September 29, 2002, Sunday An article on Sept. 15 about the career of Lorin Maazel, music director of the New York Philharmonic, included erroneous references from the orchestra to his age and to the orchestra he conducted at his New York debut. He was 9, not 7, and he conducted the Interlochen Orchestra at the 1939 World's Fair; he first conducted the NBC Symphony at 11.